This must be one of the most stupid move PKU is making in recent years. Shall we add Harvard University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Yale University, all of them got their grammar wrong when naming their schools? And the list goes on and on...

Ah, China, where universities change their hallowed and respected brands, and television channels keep their kitsch and widely ridiculed brands!

A bit like limiting the number of characters usable for names. Throw away the 6,000 years of tradition -- so names will "work" with technology that's been around for less than 6 years, and that will accept an unlimited number of characters if we wait another 6 years.

Maybe the govt. should throttle back on the number of marketing degrees being awarded...

Thanks, Joel, for this post.

Oddly enough, I was pondering the PKU logo just this morning. I'd just excavated a bi-lingual survey which had been handed out along South Drum and Gong Alley a few months back by the neighborhood committee. The only evidences of anything remotely official about the multiple-choice survey were: 1) the PKU logo stamped diffidently on the top left corner of the page, 2) an almost complete disconnect with reality, and 3) the fact that 南锣鼓巷/Nan Luogu Xiang was consistently misspelled as Nan Guogu Xiang. (South Drum and Fruit Alley.) Now that I know the old PKU logo and name will soon go the way of the Tibetan Antelope, I'll make certain to mothball the PKU-endorsed survey -- which, of course, was soon followed be the deconstruction-and-Disneyfication of South Drum and Gong Alley. (Beware ill-spelled PKU surveys; the amiable dudes with sledgehammers and new ideas won't be far behind.)

Frankly, I think "University of Beijing" has a nice ring to it. "Peking University" just sounds too old. This is New Beijing, after all, where the ruling ethos dictates that nothing much older than a bad hair day ought to be preserved. (Hutongs, traditional architecture, trees, names... Who needs 'em?!) "Peking University" is eccentric, subversive, curmudgeonly. That troublemaking, unstandard "k" is a letter just begging for rectification. "University of Beijing," on the other hand, has a very comforting, monolithic feel to it. Very grey, featureless, wide, squat. The cypher-like "of" is squeezed between those two big nouns like a Flying Pigeon getting squished by a Benz and an SUV. Very one-dreamy, one-worldy. I say, toss ye olde "PKU" into No Name Lake, auction off the domain name on Ebay, and march bravely onward to The Singularity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H 2008.

[Memo to City Management: When I say toss PKU into the lake, I mean the letters, not the university itself.]

mind you, there are also -
Univeristy of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Birmingham, University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, University of Warwick, University of California, University of San Francisco, etc

"place names used as adjectives in school names are frequently found only in abbreviated names in speech; in formal written language, the place name should be placed after 'college' or 'university' as a noun." this is TRUE as a general rule. but there are exceptions to every rule and we should should follow the usage of the individual university. (it's noteworthy that in this case “** univeristiy" is more common in US.)

anyway, the name "University of Beijing" sounds pretty cool.

When I was going there, I used to argue with classmates and the people at the foreign students' office that they should just change it to Beijing University and have done with it. They used to defend "Peking" incredibly vigorously, like, getting really, really serious about it, whereas I was totally just screwing around. They'd go on about the glorious history of "Peking" and the like, and than I would suggest that if they were into tradition, then they really ought to change the name back to Yenching University, since 'Yanjing' is a much cooler toponym anyway.

Ah well. As annoying as I found it at the time, I always liked that "Peking University" contained a subtle shout-out to Middle-Chinese velar consonants. Sic transit gloria etc..

I suppose this means "Peking University" T-shirts will become a hot item on campus this month. I better go get mine before the new ones are printed up!

I just returned from Lhasa, where I searched in vain for "University of Tibet" T-shirts at Xizang Daxue. When I asked one student on campus where the bookstore (shudian) is located he gave me directions to the library.

Any update on this? The seal on the website still reads PKU.

feng37: Looks like they compromised - no alteration to the English, but they did clean up Lu Xun's original into a smooth vector image.